Saturday, February 1, 2014

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, served over 1bn searches in 2013 after a huge surge in interest following the Snowden revelations.

Until Edward Snowden's files detailing the extent of state surveillance, the search engine received around 1.5m queries per day. But in the weeks and months following the Guardian's publication of the NSA files, the number of users more than doubled.

An 18-year-old man spoke exclusively with NBC4 from jail, where he was being held on suspicion of assaulting the undercover officers who shot him during a manhunt for a murder suspect. Keivon Young says he could feel the bullets whiz by his head. "I almost died," he said through tears. Gadi Schwartz reports for the NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Jan. 30, 2014.

Friday, January 31, 2014

An 11-year-old girl from Illinois got a dose of regulation American-style this week when local government officials shut down her cupcake business.

Chloe Stirling, from Troy, got the front-page treatment from her local newspaper, which featured how well her business, Hey, Cupcake, was doing. By all accounts, it was a successful little enterprise. Chloe was getting $10 for a dozen cupcakes and $2 for each specialty cupcake. She even donated her cupcakes when a boy in her school fighting cancer held a fundraiser.

Heartwarming? Yes. A great example of the entrepreneurial possibilities inherent in American capitalism? You betcha.

A danger to society? Apparently so.

Related: Regulations Get Sticky As the Danes Ban the Danish

Seeing the article prompted local regulators to swoop in and shut her down. The Madison County Health Department told her she could no longer make or sell cupcakes because she lacks a permit. That runs afoul of the Madison County food ordinance and Illinois' food-santitation code. Oh, and her kitchen itself wasn't licensed either.

The health department said it was only following the law, which applies to everyone, from big bakeries to sweet, detertmined young women who might have their dreams crushed from time to time.

The dessert eaters of Madison County can no doubt sleep soundly tonight, knowing their health is protected.

When I accepted “The Daily Show”’s invitation to be interviewed about my opposition to a minimum wage increase, I knew that I was walking into a trap. But given how counterproductive I know such an increase would be to those the law proposes to help, I took the risk anyway.

Of the more than four hours of taped discussion I conducted, the producers chose to only use about 75 seconds of my comments. Of those, my use of the words “mentally retarded” (when Samantha Bee asked me who might be willing to work for $2 per hour – a figure she suggested) has come to define the entire interview. Although I had no intention of offending anyone, I just couldn’t remember the politically correct term currently in use (it is “intellectually disabled”). Assuming she knew it, Bee could have prompted me with the correct term, but she chose not to. By including those comments in the final package, “The Daily Show” proved that they did not care who they offended, as long as they could make me look bad in the process. The volume of hate mail I have received in the show’s aftermath confirms their success on that front.

When asked the $2 per hour question, I responded that very few individuals would take a job at that pay, even if it were legal. In a free market, businesses compete for customers by keeping prices down, and for labor by keeping wages up. Any employer offering even low-skilled workers just $2 per hour would be outbid by others offering to pay more.

However I did suggest two groups of people who might be willing to work for $2 per hour. The first group -- which was edited out -- was the unpaid interns who tend to value work experience and connections more than pay. (In fact, “The Daily Show” staffer who booked me, and who was present during the interview, had been thrilled to start there as an unpaid intern). Since many interns work for free, $2 per hour would be an improvement. Some interns are even willing to pay to work. Since employers are afraid to hire them without pay for fear of violating labor laws or inviting lawsuits, they often hire young people working for college credit. These individuals are forced to pay college tuition to get a job they could have had for free had there been no minimum wage.

The other group was the intellectually disabled, who are in fact already exempt from the current minimum wage law by federal regulation. Although many have taken my support for this exemption as some sort of advocacy for modern slavery, I offered good reasons for the rule. While saying nothing about any person’s value as an individual or a human being, it is undeniable that the intellectually disabled have, in general, fewer marketable skills than the general population. Anyone arguing otherwise is just speaking from emotion. If an intellectually disabled person can’t perform work that produces a minimum wage level of output, then no employer seeking to make a profit could afford to pay that person the official minimum wage.

I further explained that since such individuals typically live with their parents or other caretakers, they are not working to support themselves or anyone else. They are working for the self-esteem associated with having a job -- the pride of working and making a contribution. Many of the jobs they perform may seem mundane to those of normal intelligence, but they are often the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. I pointed out that if the federal minimum wages were to apply to them, a great many of those opportunities would vanish. Others may disagree, but I believe a job for such a person at $2 per hour is better than no job at all.

Recently the Ludwig von Mises Institute received a visit from a New York Times reporter. Lew Rockwell politely asked him to leave, referring to the reporter as “part of the regime.”

The New York Times‘ subsequent article was mainly intended to be about Sen. Rand Paul, but really it was a hit piece on the Mises Institute and libertarianism in general.

I think that Lew Rockwell was right to correctly identify a scribbler for a long-time distributor of State press releases.

And given the Times‘ past efforts at pro-Democrat Party influence, one can suggest that this hit piece, with assertions made without facts to back them up, may have been intended with the 2016 Presidential race in mind.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

10) There Are Nearly Six Times More Minimum Wage Workers Today Than In 2007

In 1980, the number of minimum wage workers in the U.S. reached a peak of 4.7 million workers. At that time, the prevailing federal minimum wage was $3.10 an hour. In 2007, following more than two decades of economic prosperity, the number of Americans earning the minimum wage bottomed out at 267,000 workers. Since then, the number has risen dramatically, exceeding 1.5 million workers as of 2012, the most recent year for which data are available.

BELMONT, Miss. (WTVA) -- Donald Ray Thomas is more than ready to put the brakes on drivers. His radar equipment arrives soon and he intends to use it.

"We've got some 18 wheelers that run through this city constantly and the ones that are not out here at 3,4 and 5 in the morning-these log trucks are running through the city limits in excess of 60-70 miles per hour. It's really dangerous," Investigator Thomas said.

The majority of voters in the city gave a thumbs down during a non-binding referendum in 2013.."I know some people are not for it, but I think all-in-all it will be great for our town," Alderwoman Sonya Harris said.

"They can be used for a lot of good things, but I just don't like them," truck driver Kenny Kent said.

"They didn't want radar, but when they see the life that it could have saved, then I hope that will open their eyes and say it was a good tool that we got," Thomas added.

"Well, it might be good for some of the speeders that comes around-slow them down," Betty Lindsey said.

The plan calls for the installation of radar probably within the next couple of weeks.

There are some business owners in Belmont that worry radar will have a negative impact on local business.

In the meantime, officials will closely examine the speed limits in problem areas-especially near the school.

STU: I thought voting made a difference??? The people voted NO but the slave masters said, FUCK YOU!

In the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation’s recently released 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, the United States has dropped from the list of the top ten freest economies in the world. Over the past year the U.S. moved from thetenth-freest economy to the twelfth.

The index measures ten different factors and compares countries based on their regulatory efficiency, size of government, rule of law, and the openness of their markets. Each of the factors is measured on a scale of 1 to 100, and the country’s overall score is the average of each factor. For the 2014 index, the data cover the last half of 2012 to the first half of 2013.

When President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. was ranked the sixth freest economy. It is the only country in the world to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years.

Since 2006, the U.S. has “suffered a dramatic decline of almost six points, with particularly large losses in property rights, freedom from corruption, and control of government spending,” according to the report. “Substantial expansion in the size and scope of government, including through new and costly regulations in areas like finance and health care, has contributed significantly to the erosion of U.S. economic freedom. The growth of government has been accompanied by increasing cronyism that has undermined the rule of law and perceptions of fairness.”

Hong Kong tops the charts for the 20th consecutive year. Others in the top-ten list include Singapore, Switzerland, and America’s neighbor to the north, Canada. North Korea and Cuba occupy the index’s lowest ranks.

Dr. Vliet: The goal of the new healthcare law—AKA Obamacare—has been to reduce expenditures for medical services to seniors and shift those funds into the Medicaid expansion providing medical care for younger people. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel's brother and Obama's initial White House Health Policy Advisor, has described this fundamental transformation of American medical care in detail. He wrote a number of medical papers describing his "Complete Lives System," in which he outlined two major goals for the delivery of medical services in the United States:

1. Medical care is to be "attenuated" (i.e., rationed) for those older than 45 and younger than age 15, so that medical resources can be concentrated on those whom bureaucrats deem most "valuable" to society.

2. Doctors should be taught to do away with the Oath of Hippocrates and its focus on the individual patient. Doctors should instead be taught to make medical decisions aimed at what is good for the "collective," or society as a whole.

Emanuel's views underpin the philosophy behind the Obamacare law. They are the primary reason that over $700 billion was cut from Medicare (source: the Congressional Budget Office) and shifted into the Medicaid expansion for medical services for younger people. The older (and "less valuable" to society) one is, the harder it will be to have medical care approved.

Part of the progressive agenda is to create hate and envy. One component of that agenda is to attack the large differences between a corporation’s chief executive officer’s earnings and those of its average worker. CNNMoney published salary comparisons in “Fortune 50 CEO pay vs. our salaries” (http://tinyurl.com/c2b24rv). Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf’s annual salary is $2.8 million. CNN shows that it takes 66 Wells Fargo employees, whose average salary is $42,400, to match Stumpf’s salary. It takes 57 Wal-Mart employees, who earn $22,100 on average, to match CEO Michael Duke’s $1.3 million. At General Electric, 44 employees earning $75,300 a year match CEO Jeff Immelt’s $3.3 million salary. For people with little understanding, such differences seem patently unfair. Before touching on the fairness issue, let’s look at some high salaries that progressives ignore.

Forbes lists the “Highest-Paid Football Players 2013″ (http://tinyurl.com/kw4dv3d). Drew Brees, quarterback for the Saints, earned $40 million. If the average Saints organization employee earned $45,000, it would take almost 900 of them to match Brees’ salary. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady earned $31.3 million, and Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant earns $23.5 million for playing basketball. It would take the earnings of more than 1,200 workers making $45,000 a year to match the earnings of Brady and Bryant.

An investigation by major Mexican newspaper El Universal has concluded that the United States government worked with the Sinaloa cartel from 2000 and 2012 as part of a divide and conquer strategy. In exchange for intel on rival cartels, the U.S. government allegedly allowed the cartel to smuggle billions of dollars worth of drugs.

[A] Right of Accused. In all criminal proceedings the court shall permit the defense to inform the jury of its right to judge the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts in controversy."

I have the feeling this New Hampshire law will end up having a tremendous effect on the American judicial system as a whole. If enough people start nullifying drug laws in New Hampshire, eventually New Hampshire prosecutors will be forced to stop prosecuting drug offenses in that state entirely. In 2010, a Montana case never even made it to trial because prosecutors could not find enough people who would be willing to convict a person based on drug charges.